Hedging and grand strategy in Southeast Asian foreign policy
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International Relations of the Asia-Pacific Volume 00, (2021) 1–31
doi: 10.1093/irap/lcab003
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Hedging and grand strategy
in Southeast Asian foreign
policy
1
David Martin Jones , and Nicole Jenne *2
1
Visiting Professor, War Studies, Kings College, University of
London, UK; 2Associate Professor, Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Chile
*E-mail: njenne@uc.cl
Accepted 10 February 2021
Abstract
This article examines recent interest in hedging as a feature of interna-
tional politics in the Asia Pacific. Focusing on the small states of
Southeast Asia, we argue that dominant understandings of hedging
are misguided for two reasons. Despite significant advances in the
literature, hedging has remained a vague concept rendering it a residual
category of foreign policy behavior. Moreover, current accounts of
hedging tend to overstate the strategic intentions of ostensible hedgers.
This article proposes that a better understanding of Southeast Asia’s
foreign policy behavior needs to dissociate hedging from neorealist
concepts of international politics. Instead, we locate the concept in the
context of classical realism and the diplomatic practice of second-tier
states. Exploring Southeast Asia’s engagement with more powerful
actors from this perspective reveals the strategic limitations of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the dilemma that Southeast
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific Vol. 00 No. 0
# The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan
Association of International Relations; All rights reserved.
For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com2 David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne
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Asian states face from a rising China challenging the status quo in the
western Pacific.
1. Introduction
Hedging has become a key concept in the analysis of international
politics in the Asia Pacific (Kuik, 2008; Ciorciari, 2010; Tessman, 2012;
Tunsjø, 2013; Lim and Cooper, 2015; Murphy, 2017; Ciorciari and
Haacke, 2019). The concept’s current prominence reflects scholarly in-
terest in the international behavior of middle powers, small, or ‘lesser’
states, that is states with ‘limited influence on deciding the distribution
of power in a given regional system’ (Waltz, 1979, p. 76; Wight, 1986;
Shin, 2015) in post-Cold War Asia. These states appeared neither to
balance, bandwagon, or buck pass with the great powers in the system
as neorealist theory would predict (Waltz, 1979, p. 76). To account for
the anomalous mixed association strategies of the region’s lesser states
and their ambiguous foreign policy behavior, hedging appeared a useful
category to fill the behavioral gap between outright opposition and
alignment.
According to the prevailing understanding, hedging provides an insur-
ance policy (Medeiros, 2005; Tunsjø, 2013) mainly, although not exclu-
sively, for the region’s smaller states that face the implications of a
‘Thucydides Trap’ (Allison, 2017) set by the rising power of China and
‘the fear which this caused’ (Thucydides, 1972, p. 23) in the United States.
This understanding, however, suffers from two significant limitations.
Despite advances in the literature, hedging has remained a residual
category next to balancing and bandwagoning. In addition, the neorealist
and empiricist constructions of hedging suffer from a propensity to what
Michael Oakeshott identified as rationalism in politics, that forces
state practices into a procrustean bed of structural or systemic design
(Oakeshott, 1981, pp. 5–6; see also Waltz, 1979 especially ch. 4). This so-
cial scientific approach (as opposed to a contingent historical mode of un-
derstanding) risks, we shall argue, overstating both the intentions and the
possibilities for action in either small or middle power state foreign policy.
The arguments we develop are based on the example of the lesser,
middle power, and weaker states comprising the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) both individually and collectively.
Interestingly, the invocation of Thucydides in the Asian context notHedging and grand strategy 3
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only by Allison but also, inter alia, by Kishore Mahbubani, Ong Keng
Yong, Bilahari Kausikan, and Kang and Ma, permits us to relate the
current dilemmas of lesser states confronted by great power rivalry to
an earlier prudent or pragmatic understanding of international politics
that emphasized contingency, historical example, and counsel in the
practice of statecraft. Such an approach, combining insights from clas-
sical realist thinking and diplomatic history, we shall argue, may pro-
vide a better understanding of Southeast Asian state behavior and the
strategic resources available to middle power or small states. Thus,
what is often wrongly described as the strategic allocation of loyalties
by Southeast Asian states to the major powers may be better inter-
preted as a diplomatic practice that is distinctive, yet comparable with
‘lesser’ state diplomacy in other parts of the globe.
The argument proceeds in five stages. The next section reviews the
literature on hedging in the Asia-Pacific region, demonstrating the
problems associated with the concept. In the second section, we focus
in greater detail on the underlying problem of rationalism in the domi-
nant, neorealist, and risk management interpretations (see Haacke,
2019). The third part develops an alternative reading of hedging as a
counsel of prudence in the conduct of statecraft that fits strategic ends
to limited means. Building on this perspective, the fourth section shows
that hedging in Southeast Asia is a distinctive, but not uncommon
form of diplomacy by states lacking the military resources or the ca-
pacity of system leaders to formulate or pursue a grand strategy
(Liddell Hart, 1967; Murray, 2011).1 The conclusion summarizes the
argument and deals with its practical implications for the conduct of
international politics of the Asia Pacific.
1 For Williamson Murray grand strategy is really a matter ‘for great states and great states
alone’. What distinguishes grand strategy is the focus on acting beyond the demands of the
present. In other words, ‘they have taken a longer view than simply reacting to the events of
the day’. Nor do they concentrate on one aspect of the problem but recognize ‘the political,
economic and diplomatic framework’ within which conflict takes shape (Murray, 2011, pp.
1–3). Murray’s caveats notwithstanding, it seems that even the middling size and smaller
states do not merely react to events, but also employ their strategic resources, military dip-
lomatic and economic, to take account of the future and use the resources that they have to
try and maintain the stability of the regional order adjusting their political ends to limited
means (Liddell Hart, 1967, p. 1).4 David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne
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2. Review: hedging as a feature of Asia Pacific
international relations
Hedging has assumed a growing importance in the international
relations literature of the 21st century and almost exclusively so in the
context of the west Pacific and the often ambivalent position of its
‘lesser’, smaller, and middle powers.2 The current understanding of
the term may be traced back to a late 17th century, English, meta-
phorical, usage ‘to secure oneself against risk of loss [. . .] by betting
on the other side’. By the late 19th century, it had entered the lan-
guage of finance. Here, the word came to denote insurance ‘against
risk of loss by entering into contracts which balance against one an-
other’ (Fowler et al., 1973, p. 945). Unsurprisingly, the post-Cold
War world of globalized markets, derivative trading, and currency
speculation saw hedging applied to funds speculating in this form of
contractual risk.
It is this understanding of the ‘hedge’ that by a short, but not
unproblematic, move came to inform the term’s subsequent etymologi-
cal translation into the vocabulary of international politics. Robert J.
Art applied the term in its original fiscal sense, when he described
Europe ‘hedging its security bets’, in a work on the balance of power
in the 21st century (Art, 2004). Simply put, hedging describes an insur-
ance policy, which, if successful, minimizes risks while maximizing ben-
efits (Medeiros, 2005; Tunsjø, 2013).
In the context of the Asia Pacific, Evelyn Goh first applied the term
in a strict fashion to the policies of Southeast Asian states, embracing
‘a set of strategies aimed at avoiding [or planning for contingencies in]
a situation in which states cannot decide upon more straightforward
(realist) alternatives such as balancing, bandwagoning, or neutrality’
(Goh, 2005, p. 2). Instead, states ‘cultivate a middle position that
2 Waltz used the term ‘lesser states’ for those states that are ‘not system leaders or great pow-
ers in a system’ (Waltz, 1979, 73). If they have the capacity of states like France, Japan,
Germany or the UK they are sometimes described either as ‘second tier’ (Mead and
Gallagher, 2015) or as middle power in the case of states like Australia, Canada or South
Korea. In South East Asia the ten states that comprise ASEAN are variously described as
‘small’ and ‘weak’ but also as middle powers in the case of Malaysia, the Philippines,
Thailand, and Indonesia. Whatever else they are increasingly constrained in their behavior,
both individually and in their multilateral conduct through ASEAN by the rising tension
since 2016 between the status quo power, the United States, and the emerging regional heg-
emon, the PRC.Hedging and grand strategy 5
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forestalls or avoids having to choose one side [or one straightforward
policy stance] at the obvious expense of another’ (Goh, 2005, pp. 2–3).
In regard to the changing security architecture in the Asia-Pacific, Goh
further contended that ‘hedging is the most accurate term to describe
the strategy when engagement policies are pursued at the same time as
indirect balancing policies’ (Goh, 2006, p. 1, emphasis in the original).
Goh, in other words, considers hedging as a rational response to a
future offering a ‘potential transition toward an unstable multipolar re-
gional system with a number of major powers competing against one
another’ (Goh, 2007, p. 121). To hedge against this possibility,
Southeast Asian states ‘have chosen neither to pick sides nor to ex-
clude certain great powers, but rather to try to include all the various
major powers in the region’s strategic affairs’ (Goh, 2007, p. 121).
Thus, hedging forms part of ‘a broader, multidirectional, ‘omni-en-
meshment’ strategy’ in which states adopt engagement as the official
policy with indirect balancing as the hedge to dealing with a rising
China (Goh, 2007, p. 121). Adopting this ‘more rigorous definition of
hedging,’ Goh argues, ‘may lead to the conclusion that hedging is, in
fact, a luxury of the relatively weak only’ (Goh, 2006, p. 2).
Goh drew attention to two distinctive features of the behavior. First,
hedging is defined as a policy that is neither balancing nor bandwagon-
ing but ‘sits in between’ (Goh, 2005, p. 3). It is, in fact, deliberately
ambiguous (Kuik and Rozman, 2015). Second, hedging is also strategic
in that it links actions and mobilizes resources as part of a coherent
plan that reflects the existence of a long-term, overarching or strategic
goal (see Liddell Hart, 1967; Murray, 2011). Evan Medeiros, for in-
stance, applied the ‘underdeveloped’ concept of hedging to China and
United States ‘shadow boxing’ for influence in the Asia Pacific
(Medeiros, 2005, p. 145).
Medeiros’ treatment of great and rising power hedging clearly sits at
variance with Goh’s view that it is the ‘luxury’ of the relatively weak.
Nevertheless, Medeiros also treats hedging as the one mixed category
of foreign policy behavior besides the more clearly defined strategies of
balancing and bandwagoning. Hedging becomes an adjunct to its un-
ambiguously defined parent concepts as well as related terms such as
‘indirect balancing’ or ‘limited bandwagoning’ (Kuik, 2008). In any
case, for Medeiros, like Goh, this mixture of strategies constitutes an
essentially strategic course of action.6 David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne
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In an attempt to remedy its residual status as a ‘balancing/bandwa-
goning plus’-type action, a number of scholars sought to refine hedging
by adding complexity to the explanation of when it occurs. Tessman
for instance locates strategic hedging in the context of system polarity
and proposed that hedging is ‘most prevalent in systems that are
unipolar and in the process of power deconcentration’ (Tessman, 2012,
p. 193).
Differently again, Van Jackson proposed an alternative framework
grounded in a logic of complex networks. Within the interconnected
networks of politics and economics, the reaction to impulses stemming
from a complex structure fraught with multiple kinds of uncertainty
explains the rational response of the hedger (Jackson, 2014, pp. 331–
356).
Meanwhile, Lim and Cooper offered ‘determinate predictions re-
garding how secondary states should respond to a rising power beyond
the balancing-bandwagoning dichotomy’ (Lim and Cooper, 2015,
p. 701). To clarify the practice, they offer a more parsimonious defini-
tion of hedging that, unlike Jackson, excludes ‘political and economic
engagement.’ Concentrating exclusively on security alignment, their
model finds that ‘secondary states hedge by sending signals which gen-
erate ambiguity [. . .] in effect eschewing clear-cut alignment with any
great power’ (Lim and Cooper, 2015, p. 709). Their definition radically
reduced the number of hedging states in Southeast Asia to Singapore,
Indonesia, Burma, and Brunei, states that ‘effectively cultivate positive
non-security relations with both great powers while simultaneously
sending ambiguous signals regarding their security interests and future
alignment choices’ (Lim and Cooper, 2015, p. 712).
In contrast, Kuik and Rozman (2015) consider hedging all pervasive
in the current conduct of Asia Pacific statecraft. Reinforcing the domi-
nant understanding of hedging as a strategic insurance policy, they
contend that this ‘two-pronged approach’ that is neither ‘pure-balanc-
ing nor pure-bandwagoning’ entails three elements: not taking sides
between competing powers; adopting opposite and counteracting
measures; and using ‘the mutually counteracting acts to preserve gains
and cultivate a ‘fallback’ position’ (Kuik and Rozman, 2015, p. 2).
Ultimately, as Kuik (2020, p. 5) later argued, small state ‘hedging
avoids making a clear-cut choice of siding with one big power’ andHedging and grand strategy 7
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instead ‘involves pragmatic, overlapping, and flexible alignments with-
out rigid commitment’.
In their ‘adaptive’ behavior, Kuik and Rozman further distinguish
between ‘heavy hedgers’ and ‘light hedgers’, as actors ‘seek to hedge
with different degrees of emphasis on risk-contingency measures’
(Kuik, 2020, p. 5).
Assessing the state of the field in 2016, Korolev (2016, p. 376), like
Medeiros a decade earlier, found ‘the hedging research programme . . .
underdeveloped’.3 Korolev (2016, p. 376) further contended the concept
of indirect or strategic, light, or heavy hedging merely ‘follows the logic
of adding adjectives’ to the existing lexicon of international relations
terms. Merely adding epithets blurs meaningful boundaries between
hedging and other types of state behavior, rendering its current use an
example of what Imre Lakatos termed ‘concept stretching’ (Lakatos,
1963). Summating the hedging concept, Lewis Carroll’s Alice might
have remarked, ‘that’s a great deal to make one word mean’ (Carroll,
1934, p. 205). In the looking glass world of international relations the-
ory, hedging seems to be a term meaning ‘just what I choose it to
mean—neither more nor less.’ Hedging has a variety of applications
depending upon contingent circumstances, the cases selected, the par-
ticular context where hedging is pursued, and the level of analysis ap-
plied. Assessing the state of the literature in 2019, Ciorciari and
Haacke (2019) found that hedging has variously functioned as a mixed
strategy, an insurance policy, a form of alignment, and a response to
domestic pressures and/or economic insecurity.
In a special edition of IRAP Haacke, Ciorciari and others sought to
remedy these difficulties by identifying ‘hedging more rigorously’ and
establishing ‘clearer conceptual and empirical boundaries’, whilst, at
the same time, not ‘proposing a single definition’ for the term or fore-
closing debate (Ciorciari and Haacke, 2019, p. 370). In order to pursue
this somewhat contradictory agenda, however, Haacke and Ciorciari re-
inforce the notion that hedging functions essentially as a rational ‘risk
management strategy’ (Haacke, 2019, p. 392). Hedging is thus ‘an ac-
tivity to manage security risks, whereas balancing and bandwagoning
3 Apart from works already cited, the literature on hedging included inter alia: Kuik, 2008;
Chung, 2009; Nadkarni, 2010; Pant and Joshi, 2015; B. Tessman and Wolfe, 2011; Wolfe,
2013.8 David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne
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denote security strategies to respond to actors that are seen as posing a
security threat’ (Haacke, 2019, p. 393 emphases added). Ciorciari
argues similarly, that the effectiveness of hedging strategies relies on
‘adequate risk assessments, a willingness to bear costs to mitigate them
and . . .the availability of protective options’ (Ciorciari and Haacke,
2019, p. 372). Although as Ciorciari subsequently shows via a case
study of ASEAN’s multilateral endeavor to manage security risks in
the South China Sea (Ciorciari, 2019) it is not ‘a fail safe way to miti-
gate potential threats’ (Ciorciari and Haacke, 2019, p. 372). Lesser
states lack ‘the practical capacity to hedge against major security risks’
(Ciorciari and Haacke, 2019, p. 372). In a similar vein, but from a
structural perspective, Korolev (2019) maintains that where a system
moves from unipolarity to bipolarity, as it has in the Asia Pacific over
the last decade, the space and luxury for lesser powers to hedge
‘shrinks’.
In order to offer an alternative perspective on the debate, the follow-
ing section will argue that the dominant understanding of hedging as a
coherent strategy, despite recent caveats, still misrepresents the charac-
ter of foreign policy-making among lesser or middle power states.
Following intimations in the recent work of Haacke, Ciorciari and
Korolev, who all consider hedging a ‘prudent form of behaviour’
(Ciorciari and Haacke, 2019, p. 372), we argue that hedging makes bet-
ter sense placed in a historical context of classically realist behavior
where the practice of prudence, raison d’état, and counsel informed by
the arts of deliberation and presentation prevail in diplomacy and
statecraft especially of ‘middle powers’ (see Botero, 1589, p. 56).
3. Rational hedging and the absence of over-
arching strategy in Southeast Asian politics
The previous section has shown that hedging is commonly understood
to be strategic, ‘rationally’ aligning what from a systems or a regional
perspective appears an erratic and disjointed series of actions in order
to maintain the status quo. However, the premise that there is an obvi-
ous intent to pursue either an overarching national or regional strategy
in Southeast Asia’s international politics is far from self-evident. The
foreign policy stances Southeast Asian states adopt seem occasionally
capricious and sometimes prudent. More particularly, as we willHedging and grand strategy 9
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subsequently show, the domestic calculations of the ruling party or the
whim of the latest head of state has often been found a more impor-
tant influence upon decision-making than the strategic management of
security risks. Moreover, Southeast Asia’s scholar bureaucrats and po-
litical leaders in their political utterances appear to favor a diplomatic
style that hints at a rather different view of hedging than the rational-
strategic calculus, or risk management strategy that recent scholarship
assumes and epistemically imposes on state behavior. The problem, we
argue, is therefore not one of conceptual specification but of epistemol-
ogy. Current scholarship, in other words, situates hedging behavior in
Southeast Asia somewhat problematically within a structural function-
alist or risk management paradigm that misconceives the historically
contingent character of small state diplomacy in the region.
3.1 Hedging and the absence of grand strategy
The recent diplomatic practice of Southeast Asian states offers a series
of case studies of contradictory behavior that can only be termed ‘stra-
tegic’ as responses to specific and discrete challenges but otherwise lack
an overarching strategic design that any national or regional strategy
would demand (Waltz, 1979, pp. 73–77). One obvious recent case was
the ‘ambiguous’ decisions of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte
who, on achieving office in 2016, ‘set aside’ the Hague arbitral tribu-
nal’s decision (requested by Duterte’s predecessor) that China’s expan-
sive claim to sovereignty over the South China Sea had no legal basis.
Not content with this foreign policy volte face, Duterte also threatened
‘separation’ from the United States, its treaty ally. Six months later,
however, Duterte changed again, indicating his support for the new US
President Trump and reasserting his commitment to the US alliance.
By May 2018, Duterte’s Foreign Minister could even assert that the
Philippines ‘will go to war’ if China ‘unilaterally’ mines the resources
of the South China Sea (Wescott, 2018). Manila’s position changed
again in February 2020, when Duterte informed the United States that
he would end the bilateral Visiting Forces Agreement that guarantees
the permanent presence of US forces in the Philippines (Panda, 2020).
In June, however, the Foreign Minister announced that the decision
had been suspended for six months with its possible extension for an-
other six months. Duterte’s increasingly unpredictable policy making10 David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne
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alienated both Washington and Beijing. Whatever else, it can hardly be
conceived as an example of a lesser power strategically hedging its
commitment to either of the two larger powers.
In a similarly capricious vein, both Malaysia and Thailand
responded to western criticism of their government’s domestic political
conduct after 2016 by initially establishing closer relations with China,
before subsequently attempting to reduce China’s economic influence
and regional ambition. The Malaysian case is particularly instructive
showing how hedging behavior can emerge from the predicament of
particular domestic circumstances. During Najib Razak’s administra-
tion (2009–18), international criticism of his handling of the 1Malaysia
Development Berhad sovereign wealth fund saw Malaysia align with
China and enthusiastically welcome China’s ambitious Belt and Road
Initiative (BRI) to develop infrastructure across Southeast Asia. While,
independently, United States, Singaporean, and Swiss authorities
launched investigations into the Prime Minister’s and his advisers’ ap-
parently corrupt international financial dealings, Malaysia became an
increasingly important link in the BRI and ‘string of pearls’ (the
Chinese-built ports) stretching from the Bay of Bengal through the
Straits of Malacca to Hong Kong and beyond. By 2018, China was
Malaysia’s major source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and larg-
est trading partner (Jones, 2018, p. 43).
Given that the Straits of Malacca constitute a major choke point for
world shipping, the symbolic and strategic impact of Chinese invest-
ments set off alarm bells in Singapore. At the time, Singapore was al-
ready at odds with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over its sup-
port for the Hague tribunal’s 2016 ruling condemning China’s island
reclamation activity in the South China Sea. In contrast, Malaysia ig-
nored the ruling in return for Chinese investment.
At least this was the case until the shock election defeat of Najib’s
ruling Barisan Nasional government in May 2018, by an opposition
coalition led by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad dedicated
to exposing and prosecuting the corruption of the Najib regime (Welsh
and Lopez, 2018). When serving as Prime Minister between 1981 and
2003, Mahathir had promoted a Look East policy premised on close
ties with Japan. Back in power, he promised to review the Chinese in-
vestment program in Malaysia, pointedly observing that ‘China has a
long experience in dealing with unequal treaties . . . So, we feel we areHedging and grand strategy 11
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entitled to study, and if necessary, renegotiate the terms’ (Jaipragas,
2018). The review intimated a settling of domestic political scores
rather than any conscious strategic re-alignment.
The proposed review, however, failed to transpire. Internal divisions
within the loose Pakatan Harapan coalition led to the resignation of
Mahathir in February 2020 and his replacement in an increasingly dys-
functional coalition led by Muhyiddin Yasin.
Similar to the Malaysian case, Thailand’s foreign policy in recent
years has also reflected internal political instability. In so doing, its
attempts to maneuver between the United States and China can hardly
be described as instrumentally rational risk management. Bangkok’s
engagement with China was motivated by the desire to mitigate the
growing tensions in its relation with the Unites States. After the mili-
tary coup in 2014, most commentators predicted that Thailand would
move closer to China and away from its treaty ally in Washington. Yet,
as Joshua Kurlantzick (2018) wrote, ‘reality was always more nuanced’.
Instead, because rapprochement with China was also not without costs,
the new regime in Bangkok embarked on a course of trying to avoid,
as far as possible, the unwanted effects of its international
commitments.
While the Unites States and other Western countries criticized the
2014 coup and called for new democratic elections, China’s People’s
Daily maintained, instead, that pursuing western-style democracy had
caused Thailand’s political disarray (Prachatai, 2014). China was the
‘big winner from Thailand’s coup,’ not as a result of a proactive for-
eign policy based on strategic calculation, but because Washington pro-
voked it (Jory, 2014). Although the US government abstained from
sanctions, it downgraded military relations with Thailand and cancelled
some of its military aid. Washington also left in doubt whether the
US-led Cobra Gold exercise, one of the largest exercises held annually
with the Thai military, would take place.
China, in contrast, offered Bangkok a weapons deal that included
submarines, tanks, and other military equipment. In 2016, the two
countries conducted exercise Blue Strike, ‘the most comprehensive exer-
cise the two have ever had’ (Busbarat, 2017, p. 15). By 2018, China
was the leading source of FDI in Thailand. It became one of five
ASEAN Mekong states in the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation, the first12 David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne
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Southeast Asian institution built by China and which Beijing employs
to grant preferential loans and subsidize investment projects.
Faced with China’s increasingly ambitious investment initiatives,
however, Bangkok also sought to mitigate its growing dependence. The
Thai military neither forgot nor abandoned the benefits traditionally
afforded by its alliance with the United States. US relations with
Bangkok also improved as a consequence of the low priority the
Trump administration attached to human rights after 2017. Within the
first year of Trump’s term in office, Thai junta chief Prayuth Chan-
ocha visited Washington and declared his ‘determination to preserve
the relations between the US and Thailand’ (Bangkok Post Reporters,
2017). Thus, deepening ties with China has above all been a choice in-
formed by short-term political goals rather than a strategic calculation
or risk and reward, and ‘[w]hether this trend will change, if and when
the military steps down from power, remains to be seen’ (Murphy,
2017, p. 13).
The cases of the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand suggest that
the Southeast Asian practice of hedging differs from the dominant
model that assumes a rationally calculated policy pursuing an over-
arching logic. The next section elaborates instead how the region’s for-
eign policy elites view hedging not in predictable rational instrumental
terms, as the prevailing scholarly orthodoxy assumes, but as a contin-
gent adjustment to unpredictable circumstances and events.
3.2 Hedging and the lesser state foreign policy mind
Bilahari Kausikan, one of Singapore’s leading scholar diplomats, offers
an interesting insight into the diplomatic as opposed to the prevailing
academic understanding of hedging. He considers it a ‘strategy’ that
uses ‘major power competition to advance our own interests’ through
‘preserving as much autonomy as possible’ (Kausikan, 2017, p. 68).
Kausikan terms the ASEAN state practice ‘omnidirectional balancing.’
Yet, a close reading of Kausikan’s statements reveals that in his view
lesser states do not act in a systemic or structurally predictable manner.
Instead, they adapt their foreign policy in a tactical fashion to particu-
lar and contingent circumstances. ‘Balancing’, ‘hedging’, and ‘bandwa-
goning’, Kausikan contends, ‘are not mutually exclusive alternatives’.
Indeed, he argues:Hedging and grand strategy 13
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We see no contradiction in pursuing them simultaneously, but this is
not always easy. The mix of balancing, hedging, and bandwagoning
continually shifts as countries in the region adapt to unpredictable
external events over which they have little if any influence
(Kausikan, 2017, p. 68).
The same ideas underlie Indonesia’s traditional foreign policy
lemma bebas dan aktif (free and active). As former Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Marty Natalegawa, explained, a free and active foreign policy
is one based on the ‘capacity to make independent decision-making,
for us to be able to judge each situation on the basis of its own merit
and build like-minded [coalitions . . .] around that fact’ (Natalegawa,
2011).
Similarly, Malaysia’s former Prime Minister, Mahathir, advised
against having a set strategy in dealing with great powers when he
wrote that small states need to practice caution:
Historically small countries on the periphery of a big and powerful
state have always had reason to be wary. In this connection, we
welcome the many assurances that China will never seek hegemony
and will not do anything to harm us. . . . I ask you to understand us,
if despite these assurances, some concerns linger on, for . . . trust
does not come easily to us in view of our past experience (Storey,
2013, p. 218).
In fact, minimizing commitment either to particular lines of action
or international partners is reflected in the institutional design of
ASEAN and its various extensions like the ADMMþ and the ASEAN
Regional Forum, which are all nonbinding arrangements. As an associ-
ation designed to mitigate regional tensions and sustain the status quo,
ASEAN collates and promotes its shared lesser power perspective in its
multilateral regional initiatives. There is an overwhelming emphasis on
consensus and flexible engagement as essential ingredients of this
shared weaker state, ASEAN way in diplomacy. While this is generally
attributed to mistrust between the member states and their overriding
concern with sovereignty and internal resilience, these factors could
have been countermanded if there were an incentive to strengthen
ASEAN’s collective capacity to act vis-à-vis its more powerful14 David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne
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counterparts in the region and beyond. In the absence of overarching
national foreign policies (let alone an ASEAN grand strategy), how-
ever, ASEAN remains protean, reacting to changing circumstances as
needs arise. This is increasingly the case. It is not enough for Southeast
Asian states to anticipate the interests of the respective great powers
individually, but as an association of small states they also have to re-
act to the evolving dynamics of increasingly conflicted great power
relations by projecting its ambivalent lesser state strategy onto a
regional canvas.
3.3 The problem of rationalism in Southeast Asian politics
Empirically, the strategic element in hedging is difficult to falsify as
there is always some factor to account for even the most counterpro-
ductive or idiosyncratic changes in policy. However, the problem here
is not conceptual under-specification. The reason the concept remains
‘underdeveloped’ is because the practice of hedging or ‘trimming’,4 to
use an earlier specification of the practice of lesser states toward great
powers, negotiates a path between two policies. The purpose was to
achieve a balance ‘dwelling in the middle between two Extreams’
(Halifax and Raleigh, 1912, p. 103). To trim the sails of the ship
of state or later to hedge reflects a traditional practice of diplomatic
statecraft that has relatively recently been forced into a rationalist
framework. The problem with such an approach is that it assumes
a structural, empiricist, or risk management perspective rather than a
more nuanced historical mode of understanding.
Rationalism, as the English political philosopher Michael Oakeshott
(1981, pp. 5–6) explained, developed into a distinctive intellectual style
after the Enlightenment that subsequently influenced both the social
sciences and the conduct of government. It assumes, as does the recent
special edition of IRAP, the possibility of certain knowledge. A theo-
retical and scientific method applied to the realm of politics offers a
technique, which not only ‘ends with certainty but begins with certainty
4 The two terms appear within a few years of each other in English political discourse. The
conservative and sceptic English raison d’état theorist, the Marquis of Halifax classically
outlined the policy of ‘trimming’ or balancing between extremes in his The Character of a
Trimmer (1672). He took the metaphor from the trimming of a ship’s sails, but it is easy to
see how it might elide into a ‘hedge’.Hedging and grand strategy 15
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and is certain throughout’ (Oakeshott, 1981, p. 12). From this perspec-
tive, traditional or practical knowledge, as Thucydides or later connois-
seurs of statecraft from Machiavelli to Morgenthau or, for that matter,
Asian statesmen like Mahathir and Lee Kuan Yew, and before them
Confucius and Han Feizi understood it, was not really knowledge at
all, but mere custom and prejudice (Pye, 1985).
The rationalist technique, evident in much recent discussion of hedg-
ing, reduces ‘the tangle and variety of experience to a set of principles,
which the rationalist will then attack and defend’ only upon rational
or empirical grounds (Oakeshott, 1981, p. 6). Political activity conse-
quently ‘consists in bringing the social, political, legal, and institutional
inheritance of society before the tribunal’ of the social scientist’s
model. Waltz leaves some room for ‘irrational’ behavior when he recog-
nizes that ‘[s]tates are free to disregard the imperatives of power’
(Waltz, 2002, p. 63). Falling outside the rationalist structure of the in-
ternational system, however, Waltz had no interest in further develop-
ing his thoughts on actual state practice, and many of his followers re-
lied on a technique that simply ignores the possibility of nonstrategic
or nonmanagerial behavior. Such rational and empirical over-determi-
nation, however, need to be distinguished from realism historically un-
derstood where hedging might better be treated as a practice based on
a set of reasonable, but, at times, conflicting maxims. We develop this
argument in the next section.
4. Realism and the counsel to hedge: the prudence
of small states
The Australian emeritus editor of The National Interest, Owen Harries,
observed that realism is not a science or an ideology, but a disposition
(Harries, 1996, p. 139). It distrusts human nature and considers inter-
national rules conditional rather than absolute. It views states with a
monopoly of military power the most important actors in international
affairs, while the global society in which these states coexist remains, as
it always has been, anarchic (Bull, 2002). This understanding notably
informed the thinking of Michael Leifer on ASEAN diplomacy, which
he considered an ‘imperfect diplomatic instrument,’ whose attempts to
constrain Chinese ambition in the South China Sea was like ‘making
bricks without straw’ (Leifer, 2005, p. 28). It is also the understanding16 David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne
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that traditionally permeated Thailand’s foreign policy as ‘bamboo
bending with the wind’ based on the principles of flexibility and prag-
matism born out of necessity in a world where there are no permanent
friends or enemies (Kislenko, 2002). The kings of Siam, as Thailand
was called until 1939, are widely credited with having avoided Western
colonization due to skillful diplomacy ‘in adjusting to new interna-
tional situations’ (Fifield, 1958, p. 75). As Anand Panyarachun, former
Prime Minister and a central figure in Thai political discourse suc-
cinctly put it: ‘Thais are pragmatic, not dogmatic, and are good at im-
provising’ (Asia Foundation, 2018, p. 14).
The same approach has characterized Singapore’s regional policy
and in particular the thought of its founding father Lee Kuan Yew,
whose pragmatic vision of geopolitics earned the respect of Henry
Kissinger and Graham Allison who both continue to revere him as the
modern ‘grand master’ of ‘strategic acumen’ (Allison et al., 2012).
Reflecting on the practice of the lesser powers in the Asia Pacific in
1967, Lee observed that ‘one of the problems in Southeast Asia is that
it consists of relatively new and fragile independent nations’. Because
of their relative weakness, he maintained, they must accommodate
themselves to major external powers. ‘[Y]ou know’, Lee continued,
‘you bend with the wind like the bamboo, as the Chinese saying goes,
and if it looks as if the East Wind is blowing stronger than the West
Wind, then people start bending that way even before the wind comes’
(Lee, 1967, p. 7).
Lee disclosed a little understood fact about diplomacy in Southeast
Asia. Anticipating power shifts and adjusting policy positions was a
reality for lesser states in a geopolitical region, as it was and currently
is, sandwiched between much larger external actors. From this realist
perspective, strategy is concerned, as Machiavelli explained in The
Prince, with advice or counsel that considers the world as it is in all its
quotidian complexity and not, as the abstract rationalist might think,
it ought to theoretically behave. From this viewpoint, prudence, or
what Lee Kuan Yew following classical Asian understandings, termed
pragmatism or practical reasoning (shijian⸭践) is the central virtue
guiding state behavior and it follows no universal rule. Following this
line of classic realist thought, what characteristics does hedging take
on? A recent debate amongst the leading proponents of the Singapore
school of ‘pragmatic’ or prudential realism suggests that hedging,Hedging and grand strategy 17
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rather than a theoretical concept, is a small-state counsel and therefore
a nonstatic, context-specific practice that resembles tactical maneuver-
ing more than strategic action.
The debate commenced with a comment piece for The Straits Times,
in which former ambassador and Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School
of Public Policy, Kishore Mahbubani, drew ‘big lessons for a small
state’ from the example of Qatar (Mahbubani, 2017). Perhaps the most
important lesson was that, irrespective of their wealth, ‘small states
must always behave like small states.’ Singapore in the post Lee Kuan
Yew era, Mahbubani averred, ‘would have been wiser to be more cir-
cumspect . . . on the arbitration which the Philippines instituted against
China concerning the South China Sea dispute’ in 2016. Significantly,
he drew the lesson for small state discretion, not from the structure of
regional order, but from Thucydides’ account of the dilemma that the
neutral small state of Melos faced during the 20th year of the
Peloponnesian War caused ‘by the growth of Athenian power and the
fear which this caused in Sparta’ (Thucydides, 1972, p. 49).
Mahbubani cites approvingly the point made by the Athenian dele-
gation in their dialog with the Melians that ‘right, as the world goes, is
only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what
they can and the weak suffer what they must’ (Mahbubani, 2017).
Mahbubani further contended that a small state ‘needs to be truly
Machiavellian in international affairs’ and concluded that the hard
truth of geopolitics is ‘that sometimes, principle and ethics must take a
back seat to the pragmatic path of prudence’ (Mahbubani, 2017).
Mahbubani’s opinion on Singaporean foreign policy misadventure
raised a notable chorus of disapproval. Bilahari Kausikan considered
the comment ‘mendacious and indeed dangerous,’ contending that
Singapore’s leaders ‘did not hesitate to stand up for their ideals and
principles’ (Mohamad Salleh and Hui Min, 2017). More circumspectly,
Ambassador-at-Large Ong Keng Yong recognized the Melian dilemma
second tier states in Southeast Asia face, having ‘limited options’ to
preserve their independence ‘when caught between rising powers’
(Mohamad Salleh and Hui Min, 2017). Ong agreed with both
Mahbubani and Machiavelli that they must preserve this independence
by being ‘prudent’. However, Ong drew a different lesson from
Machiavelli’s advice to rulers, namely that small states best preserve
‘the space to maneuver’ by being active rather than quiescently18 David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne
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‘minding their own business’ ‘on the international stage’ (Mohamad
Salleh and Hui Min, 2017).
What the debate shows is that the prudence required of small states,
when it comes to geopolitical consequences, can give rise to conflicting,
but equally plausible, counsel or advice. Prudence, or hedging, is by na-
ture ambivalent, historically conditioned and somewhat elusive, espe-
cially to the modern social scientific mind with its concern with inter-
national norms and rational actor behavior.
The term prudence may be traced to the Athenian understanding of
politics as it developed in the expediency, which Thucydides identified
as the mark of statesmanship in his history of the Peloponnesian War.
The Greek understanding also had affinities with older Chinese
thought, found both in the sceptical Confucianism of Xunzi and in
Sunzi’s classic The Art of War, which also observed that ‘he who is
prudent [. . .] will be victorious’ (Mou, 2008, p. 205; Ping-Cheung,
2012, p. 120). In Athens, Aristotle subsequently distinguished phronesis
as prudence, or practical reasoning. Significantly, the wisdom of pru-
dence, as with that of tactical hedging and trimming, derived from
both historic example and practical experience. It was concerned with
particulars as well as universals, and ‘particulars become known from
experience.’ Its main business was ‘to determine not ends but means to
ends, that is what is most useful to do’ (Aristotle, 1924, p. 24). In the
Roman republican understanding, revived during the Renaissance by
thinkers like Machiavelli, prudentia, the Latin translation of phronesis,
particularly concerned the virtu required of statesmen charged with
guiding the res publica or public thing when faced with political
predicaments.
In the hands of European raison d’état thinkers following
Machiavelli, prudent counsel sought to offer more than abstract moral
injunctions when it came to questions of war and governance. Instead,
it offered a practical guide, based on historical, usually classical prece-
dents, informed by ataraxia that valued calmness of mind as the anti-
dote to zealotry, passion, and enthusiasm.
This historically informed and distinctively contingent approach to
statecraft, however, lost its pertinence in a post Enlightenment world
increasingly informed by a Kantian, rationalist democratic ethic.
Prudence assumed a more specific and politically circumscribed mean-
ing as a modern Enlightenment universalist teleology replaced it. InHedging and grand strategy 19
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Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville presciently identified the
democratic system as a threat to the traditional requirements of state-
craft in dealing with other states. Democracies, Tocqueville wrote,
‘obey the impulse of passion rather than the suggestions of prudence
and . . . abandon a mature design for the gratification of a momentary
caprice.’ Almost a century and a half later, such concerns about impru-
dence weighed heavily on the minds of US strategists during the Cold
War. It was in this context, that Cold War prudence was often taken
to denote frugality or restraint. Prudence was seen as the antidote to
unwieldy idealism or democratic excitability, and thus was assumed to
be the handmaiden of realism writ large. In foreign policy terms, there-
fore, it came to connote never exceeding the pragmatic bounds set by
the national interest. This is how it lives on in the theory of interna-
tional relations. In The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, John
Mearsheimer wrote that ‘prudence dictates that they behave according
to realist logic’ (Mearsheimer, 2001, p. 51). Yet the point of prudence
is that it never dictates. It evolves experientially and situationally rather
than by decree. Most of all, it offers a pre-scientific and anti-rationalist
guide to practical reasoning.
Contra the rationalism of structuralism or risk management, this
practical or case based prudent or hedged approach to conflict differs
from it in its sensitivity to the difficulty of applying abstract norms or
criteria to the lived experience of difficult cases or casuistry. In the ra-
tionalist or structuralist ‘way general ethical rules relate to specific
moral or legal cases in a theoretical manner, with universal rules serv-
ing as ‘axioms’ from which particular moral rules are deduced as theo-
rems’ (Jonsen and Toulmin, 1988, p. 23). In contrast, for the prudential
or hedging mind ‘the relation is frankly practical with general moral
rules serving as ‘maxims’ which can be fully understood only in terms
of the paradigmatic cases that define their meaning and force’ (Jonsen
and Toulmin, 1988, p. 23). Such an approach emphasizes practical
statements and arguments that are ‘concrete, temporal and presump-
tive’ (Jonsen and Toulmin, 1988, p. 27). In the practical field of inter-
national politics, unlike the exact theoretical or natural sciences, imme-
diate facts, particular and specific situations affect deliberation,
presentation, and judgment.
If, as Edmund Burke wrote, ‘the rules and definitions of prudence
can rarely be exact; never universal’ (Burke, 1976, p. 87), what type of20 David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne
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a distinctive small-state counsel might hedging therefore be? For Burke,
like Machiavelli and Thucydides, there were no set rules in interna-
tional politics and decisions to hedge and trim had to be made on the
basis of the situation at hand. ‘Matters of prudence are under the do-
minion of circumstances, and not of logical analogies,’ he argued.
In this context, small states would often be forced to compromise
when presented with superior force, or adopt a policy of deliberate am-
biguity as happens with the casuistic hedging behavior practiced in
contemporary Southeast Asia. A great power, on the other hand, had
a reputation to maintain, and an array of different enemies, which
meant that over-cautiousness could actually damage its long-term secu-
rity. In other words, prudence operates differently according to status
and demands a self-awareness about how others saw you, rather than
simply checking one’s own passions. As Burke explained, in a
Thucydidean vein,
I do not deny that in small, truckling, states a timely compromise
with power has often been the means, and the only means, of
drawing out their puny existence. But a great state is too much
envied, too much dreaded, to find safety in humiliation. To be
secure, it must be respected. Power, and eminence, and
consideration, are things not to be begged (Burke, 1976).
Rationalist calculations stress the costs of war and the dangers
therein. As Burke argued, however, a truly prudent counsel should not
enfeeble pre-existing power. Interestingly, it is on just such grounds
that Allison finds a US policy of engagement and hedging with China
‘fundamentally flawed’ (Allison, 2017, p. 18).
Updating Burkean prudence for contemporary consumption, or
adapting Confucius who analogously observed that ‘the relation be-
tween superior and inferior is like that between the wind and the grass.
The grass must bend when the wind blows’ (Confucius, 1893, pp. 12,
19), we might therefore distinguish between an active and reactive pru-
dence. Active prudence entails a clear willingness to take risks for the
sake of exploring possibilities open to action, while reactive prudence
focuses on modest goals, such as limited order, peace, and accommoda-
tion. The latter follows an instrumental conception of international
morality coupled with skepticism toward any radical transformation ofHedging and grand strategy 21
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the world. In this role, prudence is primarily about restraint, checking
excess and hedging ambivalently. This, as Kishore Mahbubani would
advise, is the prudence of small or weak states. Hedging from this per-
spective is hardly a ‘luxury’, but the necessary mixed prudence of small
states caught between a rock and a hard place.
4.1 ASEAN’s reactive prudence and the South China Sea
Not all Southeast Asian states’ international relations are informed by
the reactively prudent diplomatic style outlined above. Nevertheless, it
provides a useful framework to analyze the ASEAN states’ hedging be-
havior as a diplomatic method that is distinct, but not fundamentally
different, from small state diplomacy elsewhere. After all, prudence,
contingency, history, and counsel enjoy a rich tradition that long pre-
dates Enlightenment rationalism. Indeed, as Henry Kissinger and
others have written, Chinese political thought of a legalist character,
following Sun Zi, has always seen statecraft in analogously prudential
and contingently calculative terms (Kissinger, 2011, p. 30). To illustrate
the usefulness of this historically based, contextual understanding of
hedging, this section provides one example of how it applies to
Southeast Asian diplomacy. As the following paragraphs show,
ASEAN’s diplomatic practice reflects well the prudence of an associa-
tion of small states, all of whom at a national level conduct their for-
eign relations pragmatically, when not acting capriciously.
Since ASEAN’s creation in 1967, the organization developed what
has become known as the ASEAN way, a distinctive set of procedural
norms and principles that regulate interactions between its members.
The ASEAN way of cooperation consists in the use of deliberative
practices until consensus is found, the cultivation of personal ties, face-
saving, and informality. This mode of operating defines ASEAN’s ca-
pacity to act in three regards. First, the organization is at least rhetori-
cally bound to uphold the principle of non-intervention; second, it
functions according to the requirements of its lowest common denomi-
nator and third, it manages conflict rather than resolving it. While the
ASEAN way is rhetorically interesting, from a rationalist and structur-
alist point of view its practical limitations render it inefficient. Since
ASEAN has apparently seen little need to move toward a more effi-
cient model, it must be concluded that its members attach value to the22 David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne
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slow, non-interventionist process of consultation. Indeed, when evalu-
ated in terms of Harold Nicolson’s neglected explanation of diplomatic
method (Nicolson, 1977), the ASEAN way offers insights into the pre-
dicament of this league of lesser states faced with a rising hegemon in
the South China Sea.
Following Nicolson, the art of diplomacy is sensitive to time and
circumstances, it celebrates interpersonal contacts and creates a shared
diplomatic rhetoric to ensure continuity and trust. ASEAN’s approach
to timing reflects this classic view of diplomacy that difficult problems
can be left to the benefit of time and that it is important to avoid con-
flict wherever possible whilst indirectly asserting one’s interests.
Accordingly, the four ASEAN states with overlapping claims in the
South China Sea (Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam)
agreed to shelve their pending disputes. The same logic has largely
dominated their approach vis-à-vis China. While ASEAN declared the
conclusion of a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea an objective
in 1992, until today it was able to agree with China only on a first
reading of the Code (2019). Prior to this, the two parties had negoti-
ated a nonbinding Declaration of Conduct (2002) and a similarly
vague and underspecified Framework for a Code of Conduct (2017).
Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan referred to the
Framework as ‘an important document because it represents, in a
sense, consensus and more important than that, a commitment . . . to
make progress on this long overdue issue’ (Dancel, 2015). Certainly, it
avoids open contestation. Questions like where such a code might ap-
ply are spared under rhetorically underspecified and ambiguous
conditions.
Rodolfo Severino, ASEAN’s Secretary General from 1998 to 2002,
famously described ASEAN’s way of conflict resolution as ‘sweeping
problems under the carpet’ (Acharya, 1998, p. 62). This became once
again clear in the case brought by the Philippines before the interna-
tional arbitration tribunal against China’s claims in the South China
Sea. Beijing did not participate in the proceedings and simply ignored
the verdict, declaring the tribunal legally incompetent and its findings
based on false information. Thus, the verdict did nothing to solve the
dispute though interestingly, ASEAN’s relations with China improved
after it was delivered in July 2016. Besides the Duterte regime’s capri-
cious reaction described above, Thailand, Malaysia, and even VietnamYou can also read
